


when you move, i'm moved

by netflixing



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Boxer! Michael, Bruises, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Med School! Luke, Minor Injuries, Muke - Freeform, One Shot, brief descriptions of injuries/violence, just a lot of feelings, slight referenced pain kink, they're super fluffy and cute but they have #issues they need to work through, this has been sitting in my word drafts forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 02:46:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16652809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/netflixing/pseuds/netflixing
Summary: Michael Clifford, the two time award winner within his boxing category boasts a hard exterior with walls tall enough so that no one could get in, but then, Luke Hemmings, his boyfriend Luke Hemmings, with his manbuns and tortoise shell glasses and affinity for a certain type of thai food, changed that in an instant, and suddenly Michael had someone to come home to every night, and there was now a drawer of Luke's things in his dresser.alternately,med student luke and boxer michael





	when you move, i'm moved

It was quite late into the night and most of the downtown chatter had disappeared, leaving the vague sounds of cars passing through the streetlights below. Music filtered through the bedroom from the record player that sat above the bookshelf in the bedroom, one of the Lumineers albums spinning on the needle. 

Luke had his textbook, a smaller notebook that was crammed with meticulous sketched structural drawings, and at least fifteen different coloured highlighters spread across the bed in self proclaimed “organized chaos”. 

He sighed in frustration, debating if the concept of cerebral lateralization would make any more sense if he had another cup of coffee or more sleep. With his bottom lip under his teeth in concentration, he put together another flashcard of terms about the amygdala, underlining and circling until anything started to make sense. 

Studying wasn’t his favourite thing in the world but the whole credit didn’t come easy to him, and it would take at least a few days for the material to settle in to a comfortable recall. 

Over the music, he hears the door unlock and the shuffling sounds of the coat closet being opened, gloves being dropped down in front of the fridge, the knowing sounds becoming second nature after living with someone for almost eight months. He shoves the textbook off his lap, walking over to take the record off and then moving to lean against the bedroom door frame. 

“I didn’t see your round tonight -I just had so much to do..I’m sorry. I can make you tea if you want?” 

He’s rambling and basically vomiting the words out as soon as the other male steps past the threshold because he’d been rehearsing what he was going to say for the past two hours, absolutely afraid of saying the wrong thing, or not saying enough. 

“S’okay.” Is the reply, beat up Adias’s being kicked off into the closet more forcefully than usual. “They didn’t stream it tonight and I ..I fucking threw it anyways.” Blonde hair clung to his forehead, barely visible through the dark hoodie he had on. 

“You what sorry?” Luke asked tentatively, he wasn’t the best at hearing mumbled words _( that’s what you get after learning what five different coding bells sounded like on your first day on the job)_ , but he chewed his lower lip out of a nervous habit he could never get himself to kick. 

“I completely threw the match okay? I lost! I lost all my fucking money that I put in and bet against my fucking opponent tonight okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?” Michael ripped the gym bag off of his shoulders and threw it into the closet , voice cracking as he said it and suddenly Luke’s heart dropped and he felt like the worst boyfriend in the world. 

Luke flinched at the roughness and how his voice sounded when it was raised, but he saw how Michael’s face fell and he knew how much this match meant to him, and how hard he’d trained these past few weekends for it, Luke even lugged his books and laptop to the gym, sitting on top of a box jump to finish a diagnosis report while watching Michael condition and strength train while offering the occasional word of encouragement and a cold Gatorade from his backpack. 

“God I’m sorry..I didn’t mean it like that I just...I know that you..I’m so sorry, I’ didn’t know..” in a few short strides he’s able to rest his chin against Michael’s shoulder, closing his eyes briefly, hands wrapping around the tops of his shoulders. He stayed there for a minute, fitting against him. Michael’s head bowed to kiss the top of Luke’s head, taking a small moment to inhale the minted scent of his curls. 

“Are you okay? You didn’t break anything this time did you? Wiggle your fingers for me.” 

He’s sounding like somebody’s mother right now, doting over every inch of his boyfriend’s skin, but there had been far too many times to count where Luke had practically dragged Michael into his car to take him to the ER to get pain meds or to even get his fingers splinted and x-rayed because the rough edged male was so stubborn he would most likely just duct tape them together and call it a day. 

“We didn’t repeat the great collarbone incident of March, don’t worry. They’re fine, they’ve been through worse no doubt See? Look,” He holds his hands in front of his face, puffy fingers with black nail polish moving ever so slightly through the holes of the wraps.

“Honestly, it really is okay, you didn’t know, i wouldn’t have wanted you to miss out on your study time. Cause it’s okay m’fine anyways. The guy didn’t even shake my hands afterwards he was a total dick...” Michael rambled off about something again within seconds, changing the subject. 

But with the way Luke felt Michael tense under his touch he wasn’t buying his air of certainty. 

“Let me see you love... please?” Luke grasped at the edges of the hood, until it reluctantly was pulled down. 

“Baby, holy shit, did the other guy even get a scratch?” Luke let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. It was hard to see one of the only people he loved like that.

Michael chuckled underneath his breath  
“‘Dunno if it’s broken or not but Clo tried to tape my rib ‘cause isn’t that’s what your supposed to do - right? I’m asking you cause you _are_ Mr. Surgical Resident..” 

Chloe ran the inner operations of the club and made sure everything went as smoothly as it could from first entry until when the last fighter went home. She made sure things were as fair as they could be , and that whoever lost the match, wouldn’t be shoving the winner into the pavement in the parking lot. 

Luke and Michael had her over for dinner once or twice and she was a smart girl, but was destined for bigger and better things, which the same could be said for most of the guys who were getting the shit kicked out of them each night. 

Luke had made it a goal to try and drive out to a live match one month, to see his boyfriend and watch him do what he loved, and there was something to be said about the way he felt when Michael trained in their living room and he just stood back and watched.

In reality, he just didn’t believe he could stomach it and in all honesty, being as connected as he was to Michael, he’d probably start crying on the spot in the stands like the big softie he really is. He watched them on the streams sure, but there was a sense of disconnect to them, like they weren’t actually happening. 

“Well, uh,” suddenly every year of school he’d gone through had completely flooded his mind, it was like when you studied so hard for a final and then when you opened the booklet in front of you the next day, all your mind wanted to think about was the migration habits of monarch butterflies or some other stupid thing that did not relate even in the slightest sense to what you needed to know. 

“Yeah I think so..”

Gentle fingers reached out to probe swollen skin, Luke tutting with unsettling worry. 

“You...need to be more careful out there, at least for me, promise?” 

“Babe, there’s no such thing as safety precautions in my line of work. We don’t really get the advanced top of the line health and dental plan.”

They both used comedy in the first couple of months to help them through it, their newly discovered traumas, learning how to handle each other’s demons.

“Can you just..I don’t know.. try it for once? I hate seeing you like this, knowing that someone just beat the absolute shit out of you tonight .” He frowned slightly as he surveyed the damage done. With a sigh he reaches to touch at Michael’s fingers, feeling the rough surface of the wraps against his own. 

“Hey now, don’t doubt me, I do throw a pretty mean left hook.” Despite the dark circles under his eyes, he still manages to crack a small smile. 

“And you forgot to unwrap your hands again you big goof,” Luke lightly chides, angling himself to capture a small kiss against the male’s lips.

“I- I like it better when you do it anyways, even though I’m usually half asleep when you do,” He’s surprisingly bashful for a man that could literally twist someone’s arm behind his back and potentially break it in three different places. 

Luke smiles softly and takes Michael’s hands in his own, pressing small kisses against his split knuckles. Micheal sighs in response, as if saying “grateful grateful grateful” in an endless round. 

“Let’s go get you cleaned up - yeah?” 

Michael hated to be coddled and doted over, but within the confines of his own apartment, he’d let Luke in, boundaries within touch and care being knocked down slowly, but it was still very much a fighting game most days. 

 

Their first aid kit was well stocked with more things than most twenty something years olds would ever even think of, and it was used more often than not. From the time Luke moved in, his own collection of antiseptics and medical staples didn’t even have time to collect dust in the shelf. 

“Tell me something good, something you did today or learned about- I dunno. I need something to distract me from how fucking bad this stings. ” 

He had to somewhat awkwardly contort his body so that he could soak his hands in the warm sink water, while Luke sat crosslegged on the tile floor of the bathroom, rolling out gauze strips and scanning for butterfly bandages. He had connected his phone to the bathroom speaker and some cheesy country song about alcohol and girls was on at the moment. 

He grits his teeth, “Please I guess?” 

“Well.. I.. “ Luke paused, scanning for something interested enough but easy enough to explain.  
“This isn’t anything to do with my clinic work but, I watched some video on Instagram today about a bunch of little pigs going down a slide..”

“I’m sorry-what?” 

“Their legs just-“ Luke snorts with laughter, pausing as he tried to poorly explain the video “splayed out when they got to the bottom of the slide and just splashed into this lake water. It reminded me of some kind of cartoon.. ” 

“Here I am thinking you’re going to amaze me by telling me some crazy smart scientific factoid that you learned in med school or some little kid you helped cure in clinic today and you decided to tell me about baby pigs?” Michael shook his head with a laugh “I don’t mind honestly but you have to show me this video later okay?” 

Luke nods “Of course, but for now, I need you to look to the corner.” 

As cautiously as he can, Luke applies the butterfly bandage across the cut above Michael’s eyebrow, judging that it was too thin for a makeshift stitch. He presses a tiny kiss to the tip of his boyfriend’s nose and Michael scrunches up his face in response, giving a cheesy half grin. 

“What am I ever going to do without you? Putting me back together like some misfit toy?”

“You sure were in worse shape when I first met you,” Luke responds playfully. In grabbing a towel from the rack he gently lifts Michael’s hands from the sink , wrapping them in the towel to sop up the water. 

He turns to drain the sink and kneel onto the floor again, “I just..” Luke sighs, sifting through a level of the first aid kit, weathering himself for the conversation about to happen. “How long are you thinking about doing this for Michael?” 

The bleach blonde male blows an abrupt breath out his nose, obviously taken aback by the sudden shift in conversation . 

“Luke it’s not as easy as you think, I can’t just toss all my hard work away like that? I can’t wash my hands of this and say I’m done with it all overnight. Everything I’ve built up for? All my titles and all the shit I’ve been able to get because of the money I get when I win.” 

Luke nods his head, Michael was off on a tangent now, Luke tuning out the all too familiar excuses. That it was the only thing he had _(doubtful)_ , the only thing he was good at _(which wasn’t true at all)_ , the only place he felt at home _(definitely a big fat lie)_

“If I didn’t do this, do you think I would have asked you to move in? Probably not ‘cause I’d still be living in the basement of my mate’s house.” Micheal huffs. 

Luke ever the dutiful, listens to the rant that seems to never have a coherent ending point, as he focuses more on painting a small layer of neosporin over skin, pressing his lips again over swollen fingertips, and then to his lips, slow and sweet. 

Before he met Michael, he would never consider himself as an intimate person, or as someone who expressed their emotions at any kind of level, but once they started dating it was a different kind of feeling. 

With Michael, when they were together at home, they reminded him of those annoying straight couples that Nicholas Sparks wrote about. 

They danced in the kitchen, they’d spend hours just laying in bed and doing nothing on the weeks Luke would switch work shifts,. 

Sure, he’d dated others before but usually on a one time basis from someone he met at the horrible country western bar in their city or off of tinder. 

Michael was a tough egg to crack so to speak when they were first together, openly talking about anything from who forgot to do the dishes to coordinating work schedules so someone could be home and cook, was like pulling teeth. 

Luke worked part time at that bar while he was in undergrad, seeing the same boy come in three nights a week, dark eyebrows and purple soaked under eyes that matched his hair (at the time) perfectly. 

At the beginning it was just casual small talk, the usual _“had a tough night buddy?”_ And _“it’s Friday, drinks are on me”_

But then it became abundantly clear that Michael was coming in only on the nights that Luke had shifts, even going as far as to offer a date ( _granted, this was a loudly shouted request that came after the consumption of three whiskey sours_ ) 

Luke denied the requests until Michael was actually sober and took it as a joke at first, there was no actual way someone like him wanted to date a guy _right_? 

He’d taken to calling Luke “cowboy” as a ridiculous term of endearment when they first started seeing each other because of the ridiculous hat he was forced to wear during his shift, paired with the matching belt buckle and brown boots, he was all but missing a lasso and some cattle in his yard to corral.

Their first date went as well as he’d hoped, and they decided that they had a good thing going so, they went with it. And not to say he believed in that crap about sole-mates and fate, but leaving the bar on that Wednesday night in Michael’s beat up old Volvo was one of the best decisions he’d made in this stage of his life so far, considering a large proportion were..well, crappy. 

He’d changed his major, two times over so far, from biology, to psychology and back again to pre med. admittedly he was content with where he was. Including the fact that his drawer of things in Michael’s apartment grew from one tiny section in the dresser, to now having at least 50% of his closet claimed by his various vintage sweatshirts, ripped jeans and button ups, overtaking the spaces where Michael jammed in basketball shorts and old ratty t-shirts he used for training. 

“Would you be up for take out? We could just lay in bed,, watch Netflix?” Luke interrupts Michael from his run on sentences, crouching to sit onto the edge of the bathtub in order to properly inspect his handiwork. 

“Mhm, that’d be nice, I’d like that, you and I both know how well things go when I try and cook..” he laughs quietly. 

“Stop fidgeting I’m trying to-..” the taller blonde curses as Michael takes the opportunity of having a free hand to card it through Luke’s curls, entangling his fingers through the bouncy strands and pulling at them ever so gently and only _slightly_ enjoying the response he got in return, the way the other leant into his touch almost as if an immediate reflexive reaction. 

“Am I going to have to be gentle with you now? Can’t beat you up as much as I’d like to anymore, ” Luke teased lowly under his breath, eyes flickering up, ever so briefly running his thumb along the curve of Michael’s nose, foreheads mere inches apart. 

“Wouldn’t bet on it _cowboy_ ,” he teases, masquerading his voice as the poorest southern drawl he could muster, earning a genuine laugh from Luke. 

“You absolute dork, you totally just ruined our moment..”

**Author's Note:**

> i could possibly turn this AU into a longer series with other works, so let me know if you liked it!  
> comments and kudos are always apprecited  
> i haven't wrote for this fandom in abt over a year so i'm trying to get back into it!


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